Pelleted Gypsum

Pelleted Gypsum is a very remarkable product. It's calcium sulfate and is used in a number of different applications. It has sulfur in the sulfate form, so it's all ready to be used by plants. The analysis shows it has 17% sulfur and 22% calcium.

It is a little bit slower reacting for a sulfate than say ammonium sulfate or potassium sulfate, but the gypsum works to take out excessive sodium. It will work to put the right ratio into place between the calcium, the magnesium, the potassium and the sodium. So it just kind of helps to put all of those cations in proper ratio with each other.

We use it to leach excessive sodium. It provides sulfates in organic production for something like soybeans where we need to get some sulfates out there. We use it when the soil is going anaerobic and this will help pull it back up to a more oxygenated environment in the soil.

Pelleted Gypsum works very well in combination with limestone and soft rock phosphate and together they have some kind of a strong synergistic effect between the three of them. And really gypsum is kind of an unsung hero in modern production. It is critically important and we use it in a lot of applications. Most of the soil programs we make use gypsum. It's also very useful to supply calcium to something like blueberries where you want to keep the pH a little bit lower, so it's helpful there.

So those are some the benefits of pelleted gypsum. We frequently will use from 300 to 500 lbs. per acre. And for the most part, 500 lbs. is a maximum application rate. The only time we go against that rule is out in western soils where we have really extremely saline soil or sodic soil that has got some problems that need to be leached. And so then we might go up to a ton per acre rate.

Pelleted Gypsum is available in bulk hopper bottom, ton tote bags and it's also available packaged up in small bags that are put on 2,000 lbs. per pallet, but in small bags that can be broken down. It's a very clean pellet, not a dusty or broken pellet. It's a very nice product and it would mix very well in a fertilizer spreader and spread out. It doesn't react very much with other fertilizers. Overall Pelleted Gypsum is a very important part of growing quality crops.